Beloved Vampire (12 page)

Such evil had infiltrated Farida’s family, for it was the only comprehensible explanation for their ability to take a beautiful, brave woman, one of their own blood, and stake her out in the desert sun, torment her and then let her broil there. She’d died in agony.

“My lord.” He wondered if Enrique realized he’d just saved the support beam to the room with the quiet prodding. “Should I send word to the Council?”

“No.” Mason uncurled his bloody fingers. Having been buried beneath a few tons of rock before, he didn’t care to repeat the experience. “Not yet. First, we help her recover her mind. Then I will deal with the Council. But no one is ever hurting that girl again.”

014

Raithe had taught her there were no absolutes. His will was everything, and he could bring things out in her she didn’t even know were there. There were no definitions. She didn’t prefer only men or women, or apple versus chocolate pie. Everything could become a pleasure or a torment, depending on the moment, the need, the desire.

That lesson had been so well learned she couldn’t deny it. The twitchy need in her, the borderline panic about those restraints and her current situation, made it hard to breathe. But here was a distraction, a channel for the panicked energy.

She lifted her chin and straightened in the tub, awkwardly. “I want to kiss you,” she said hoarsely.

“Then your command is my deepest wish, child.” Amara settled her lips on Jess’s, light, affectionate. But the platonic sensuality was fleeting, for Amara’s clever mouth teased Jess’s open to find her tongue, stroke and stimulate it so desire bloomed in her chest, warring with the panic constricting her chest. Jess made a strangled sound as Amara’s fingers curled around the back of her neck, keeping Jess safely upright in the tub.

Closing her eyes, she let herself be taken over by it, with the tini est tinge of despairing hope that it would not be followed by pain or horror. This did seem different. The garden was a transparent shadow, a ghostlike memory, but if she tried, she could imagine it in full, vibrant bloom around them. So many lush tropical flowers, the chatter of monkeys, birds with strange piercing cries. The shadow over her closed lids was a man’s shadow, a man’s hand cradling her face, tilting her head back to capture her lips. He pushed her back to the ground, demanding she surrender everything, give him herself, be his in all ways, and he would fill the aching emptiness inside of her. This was a magical place, the kiss spinning a spell that would keep away everything painful, real and ugly.

She didn’t have to be in the steel room. She could stay here instead, spinning in this fantasy vortex forever, her body lifting to his, wanting to surrender, give to him. Not be afraid of his touch.

Come for me, Jessica.

She imagined him saying those words, a voice inside her mind, male, urgent and yet calm, steady. If he said them, she could let go, could spin free and wild, because there was no choice. The thought swept every inch of her skin, rippling with heated water, his imagined touch, a woman’s hands, the smell of lavender. Amara’s hair curtained her face.

She strained against her bonds, wanting to wrap her arms around something, somebody. As if knowing her need, Amara’s arms encircled her, arched her up against her voluptuous bosom, holding Jess as she shuddered, caught in yearning desolation and loneliness.

In the center of Eden, a serpent blinked at her with Raithe’s eyes. But the arms held her closer, and she brought that male voice back into her head, gave it the words she needed to hear until it all spun away.

Fear no evil, for I am with you
. . .

“There you are, sweet girl. We have you.” Amara’s voice. Jess reoriented herself as the woman eased her back into the water, stroking her hair. “You’re so lovely. Thank you.”

It took her a few seconds to realize why the woman was giving her thanks, but then Jess awkwardly managed a shrug, which reminded her of the manacles. “Please take these off.”

“Only Lord Mason can take them off. It will be all right.” Amara gave her a sympathetic but implacable look. “Let’s finish getting you cleaned up, out of this tub, and we’ll walk around the grounds. You need to know where everything is. And we’ll feed you.”

The shift from arousing lover to motherly nurse was smoothly done, Jess reflected. Too smoothly for her raw emotions and embarrassed, vibrating body. “Did he teach you to manipulate people like this? You’re good at it.”

Amara, removing a towel from a cabinet, stopped and turned. “Excuse me?”

The woman’s tone was actually frosty. Intriguing. Raithe’s servants had been like salespeople, handling negative reaction with sugarcoated words and blinding, fake smiles. “You heard me.”

Amara tossed back a wave of sable tresses. Any man would want to bury his face in them. Long, beautiful hair, perfect face, unscarred body. Elegant and self-assured, reveling in a lifestyle Jessica had abhorred. She hated her.

“Yes, I did hear you,” Amara said evenly. “My lord Mason has taught me a great deal about pleasuring myself and others, in ways that have enhanced my life, and my love for Enrique. But manipulation means twisting someone for your own benefit, not theirs.

Everything done here will be for you, Jessica. For your benefit.”

It’s for your benefit Jack must die. It is a lesson you must learn. For your benefit, and that of those you love
. . .

“Sure,” Jess said, and turned her face away.
You lying bitch.

Amara slid her hand under Jess’s arm. “Let’s find you something to wear.”

Jess complied, using Amara’s help to stand. The weakness she’d expected to be experiencing from the earlier seizure was already gone, an unsettling reminder that she, too, had a third-mark’s strength, though it was likely somewhat less than Amara’s, being newer and her body not properly nourished. After being near death for so long, going from one extreme of the spectrum to the other was jarring. But that center fulcrum, being a vampire’s property, had remained the same, as if she were the hands of a clock, spinning around, thinking that time was passing, even as one end of those hands stayed anchored in the same place.

She wondered how often Amara had had to fight for her life. Had she ever been denied food for a week and then been shoved into a kennel with two starving Rottweilers as dinner party entertainment, the three of them in a fight to the death for a hunk of raw, rotted meat?

When Amara bent to retrieve the sponge and straightened, her face was inches from Jess’s. Jess remembered the dog she’d pinned, how she’d hammered desperate fists into his windpipe until she crushed it, while he clawed skin from her naked body. As the life died out of his brown eyes, she’d known he was the lucky one. The other dog had cowered back, her dominance established, and waited for his share until she wolfed down her part of the meat. He’d been so hungry his eyes never left it. The blood dripping from her mouth was a contrast to the saliva dripping from his.

The brief glimmer of uncertainty in Amara’s eyes was the only opening she needed. Slamming her forehead against the woman’s temple, Jess forced her to stumble, and then threw her shoulder into hers. Amara’s feet shot out from under her. She fell face forward into the tub, her rib cage striking the edge hard enough to break some bones.

Most accidents happen in the bathroom, after all
. . .

Jess fell on top of the woman’s upper body, forcing her head under the water. Bracing her feet at one end of the tub, Jess caught her fingers in one of the Jacuzzi’s jet portals near her bound wrist to brace herself, hold Amara down. She used the woman’s body to stay above the water. If she hadn’t dazed the servant, she would have been thrown off, but as it was, Amara was still disoriented. Hitting someone in the head with her own made both opponents see stars, but Jessica had the upper hand. She fought through the dizziness to keep it.

When Amara went limp, unconscious from the blow and oxygen deprivation, Jess wallowed off her and struggled up to her knees, making it to her feet. If Mason wasn’t tuned into them right now, she might have a window of opportunity to . . . what? Her ankles were locked together. She couldn’t do more than hop. That didn’t matter. The point wasn’t escape; it was resistance.

Torture me, you bastard, but don’t you dare try to trick me with kindness through one of your whores.

She sat down on the tub edge, used the fortunately placed wall behind it to lever her feet out of the tub. Amara was third-marked.

Only a heart strike could kill her, so Jess was unconcerned about her drowning. Instead, she made it to her feet, wet, dripping, naked and impassive as Enrique burst into the room.

Though she tensed, prepared for attack, he ignored Jess. Lunging to the side of the tub, he lifted Amara out of the water, pushing her hair back from her face. It gave Jess a moment to study him. He was a complement to Amara’s dark beauty, of course. Black hair, though cropped short, and a fine aquiline face and green eyes. Not quite as tall or broad as Mason, but he had a lean, elegant strength, like a ballet dancer, or an expert fencer. He displayed it now as he lifted his wife in his arms and bore her out of the room without a glance in Jess’s direction.

She shivered a little from the damp cold. So what now? She hic cupped on a giggle. When there was nothing to lose, painting herself into impossible corners meant nothing. Then she glanced up, and he was standing in the doorway.

Despite the ferocity that had goaded her attack, a trickle of fear returned. Yet she forced herself to remain still while his gaze covered her, as if marking each bead of water rolling down her body, the thrust of breasts and point of sex. His look reminded her that Amara’s kiss and her own imaginings had aroused her, mixing the cool wetness on her thighs with a warm and viscous reaction.

When his eyes returned to rest on her mouth, she recalled the voice again.

Come for me, Jessica.

It had been his voice.
Jesus Christ and shit.

“My intention is to have Amara tend to your needs until you are safe to release from your bonds. Bathe you, feed you, care for your more intimate requirements. You are in danger of having that option replaced by something you will like far less.”

His hands on her, bathing her, feeding her. Touching her all the time, never a moment’s peace. But there was no safety, no peace.

Though her heart rate accelerated, she curled back a lip. “If you’re going to fuck with my head and my body, do your own dirty work. Wipe my ass yourself.”

Then he took a step into the room, filling it with his larger-than-life presence, his powerful body. The fury that had carried her through her attack on Amara drained away. No, it didn’t drain away. She’d just reached the bottom of the barrel and hadn’t realized it.

She’d learned to deal with Raithe, responding as he needed her to respond, holding that tiny kernel of herself somewhere else, but now that fortitude was . . . gone. Swirling away, like the water disappearing from the tub, because Enrique had opened the stopper when he recovered Amara.

She couldn’t stop herself from flinching back against the wall, though she was glad it was there, else she would have fallen on her ass with her hobbled legs. Self-loathing flooded her. As he advanced, picking up a towel, she hated the fear that made her speak.

“Please, don’t.”

“Easy,
habiba
. Easy.” He didn’t choose the cautious approach used on unpredictable animals, which would have made her more nervous. Instead he simply walked up to her. She couldn’t strike out at him, but as she tried to twist away, he began drying her.

Her hair, her shoulders and breasts, abdomen and stomach, down to her sex. When she made a whimper, he slid the towel in the narrow area between her legs, absorbing the moisture. His touch was familiar, recalling her imaginings when Amara was touching her.

Of course the bastard would have seen those visions, and had some way of making her feel his touch through his mind. Raithe thankfully hadn’t been able to do that. His drying rhythm slowed, became something different, the terry cloth caressing her labia, her still-sensitive clit. Her body contracted, betraying her, but it meant nothing. Vampires knew how to make this dark part of her come forward, the part that would do anything to please him. She’d have it surgically removed if she could, and since she couldn’t, all she wanted was death. Freedom from the shame of herself.

“Please don’t touch me,” she burst out. Her muscles spasmed, an involuntary resistance to the restraints. “If you mean it, about not hurting me, then don’t touch me. It’s agony.”

He paused, considering her, that large body and distracting scent so close. Inclining his head a fraction, he wrapped the towel around her, tucked it over her breasts so she was covered, though she couldn’t help how gooseflesh raised on the upper swells as his knuckles brushed her there.

“All right. Are you going to let Amara take care of you?”

She nodded, staring at his chest.
Go away go away go away.
Putting a fingertip under her chin, he made her lift it. “You will not try to hurt her again? Promise me this one thing, Jessica.”

She closed her eyes. “Look at me,” he commanded, with a sharpness she couldn’t refuse. She stared up into those amber depths.

He was a vampire. Vampire. Even his scent should repel her, and yet she’d relished the heat of his hands through the towel, and couldn’t take her eyes off his mouth, the planes of his face. The man Farida had believed she loved.

She wondered if the brain could simply explode from the inability to reconcile nightmares and dreams come true. She felt like one of those supercomputers in a movie, given a problem it couldn’t solve, therefore losing all ability to function. Only she wouldn’t be that lucky.

“Jessica.”

“I won’t.” Though in truth, she wasn’t sure. She couldn’t seem to control her reaction to him, part fear, part revolting need. The fury had taken her over, making it impossible for her not to hurt Amara. For the five years she’d been with Raithe, and the months on the run, she’d held herself on a tight leash, but she’d had a focus then. With Raithe, it had been to survive to protect her family.